By
Mohammed Alomari
Almost
everyday we hear about how Iraq is spiraling quickly
into the abyss of a bloody civil war, and possible
partition. We hear horrific stories of
militiamen kidnapping people and then torturing them
to death with electric drills, leaving their bodies
full of holes or burning their victims alive. Car
bombs frequently go off killing the innocent.
Everyday hundreds of people are killed. How did this
country get transformed into this ugly nightmare?
To
truly appreciate what has happened in Iraq, try to
imagine this scenario:
Imagine
one day waking up and finding out that our nation’s
leaders have completely dismantled all the police and
military. As a result, there is not one
policeman, or state or federal law enforcement agent,
or even one National Guard or army soldier to protect
you from the criminal elements or terrorists or
anyone else. It would be total chaos. That is
what happened in Iraq in 2003. All military and
security forces were abolished.
Then
imagine that instead of recalling the army and
security forces, the authorities in this imaginary
scenario decided to form a new army and police from
members of the KKK, some racist supremacist militias,
some mercenaries, and organized criminal gangs.
Then with the new government-issued badges and
government-issued vehicles, these armed groups begin
arresting, torturing, and murdering innocent people
either because of their faith or creed or purely for
profit.
Yet,
this is exactly what happened in Iraq. In 2003,
a new Iraqi Army and security forces were formed,
primarily by enlisting members of sectarian
supremacist militias and foreign mercenaries who had
a hateful agenda against members of other faiths.
As a result, for the last three years, these
sectarian supremacist militias who cause most of the
bloodshed in Iraq, according to Ambassador Khalilzad
and some U.S. military commanders on the ground, have
successfully infiltrated the Iraqi military and
security forces and have used the color of law to
carry out their crimes. These militia death
squads operating from the Interior Ministry and other
government agencies, have been going around
arresting, kidnapping, brutally torturing, and then
executing thousands of innocent victims, solely
because they are members of another faith, or purely
for profit.
Add
all that to the foreign fighters, terrorists, and
foreign intelligence operatives of other countries
who have exploited the security vacuum and want Iraq
to remain unstable. It was these grave mistakes early
on that have now mushroomed into what is now near
civil war proportions.
As
the situation worsens, many are debating the
withdrawal of U.S. forces, especially after the
release of the Iraq Study Group Report. Although
opinions vary from a quick withdrawal to an
unspecified longer commitment, the ISG report is
somewhere in the middle-withdraw combat troops by
early 2008. Whatever timetable is put forward
for a withdrawal, the U.S. has to use the time it
still has in Iraq effectively and wisely.
Although
the ISG report offers some good practical suggestions
to solve the complex problems, it does not offer
serious solutions for one major source of trouble:
the corrupt and militia-infiltrated sectarian Iraqi
security and military forces. More training and
reconciliation is simply not enough. The
Administration must use military power to completely
disband the militias, and then reform the sectarian
Iraqi military and security forces and cleanse them
of militia infiltration.
Among
the solutions offered by many to correct the skewed
sectarian imbalance in the military and security
agencies include bringing back the low-level officers
and soldiers of the former Army, and/or implementing
a short-term military conscription, which will
guarantee that all faiths and communities are
accurately represented in the forces. In this
manner the heavily skewed sectarian military and
police will be replaced by all-professional services
representing all communities in Iraq, and
strengthening the bonds of unity in the nation.
Then and only then, will there be a truly unifying
Iraqi force effective enough for the U.S. to rely on
to secure the country when we leave.
Ignoring
these problems will only ensure that the violence
will worsen and eventually evolve into an all out
civil war leading to the breakup of the country into
mini-states, like Somalia today. The likely
result would be at least two extremist anti-American
mini-states in Iraq: one aligned with Iran in the
south and another like Taliban in the center. Both
mini-states will cause chaos and upheaval in the
neighboring states. Instead of spreading
democracy, the experiment in Iraq would have spread
violent extremism throughout the region.
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Mr. Alomari gave lectures on democracy, the U.S.
Constitution, and the Bill of Rights in Iraq in 2003-2004
to Iraqi Academics and members of the Constitutional
Committee of the Governing Council. He has
traveled extensively to Iraq 2003-2006.
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